After all Miss Martin's orations, machinations and posturing, all it took to depose her was a well-placed zap with a cattleprod. If only Kieren had known. Bum-zaps aside, Sunday's finale of In the Flesh, BBC3's Bafta-winning zom-dram-com, had a lot to get through. And, after last week's flashback-heavy episode, focus was kept tightly on the main plot of the long-mooted Second Rising and whether Simon's allegiances lay with the Prophet or with Kieren.

Then there was Philip and Amy's Big Day Out, which was so sweet that when her heart began to beat it almost coaxed an emotional twinge from my own black, shrivelled claret-pump. Telly tropes dictate it could only ever end in tragedy, and Stephen Thompson deserves the utmost credit for his portrayal of Philip. especially his baffled grief when Amy passed (again – you know what I mean). Philip's boy-come-good arc this series has been a delight; it's just a shame it was so obvious Amy will be coming back. Re-re-animated or something.

Wunmi Mosaku as Miss Martin has been joyously, despicably evil throughout – and Amy's re-killer got the backstory she deserved: a moving monologue about her brother nestled within an attempt to corral the Roartonites into one metaphorical book-burning too many. In The Flesh has always dealt in shades of moral grey, and insight into Martin's motivations was welcome, even if her plan was actually rather stupid. Was it really to oppress the undead in Roarton, in order to trigger an insurgency that would bring around the Second Rising?Because it feels like a much more direct way to trigger the Second Rising would be to just support and assist the ULA.

I had a couple of other minor niggles. It seemed to me that the U-turn of Kieren's family – Jem going back to Gary, Kier's parents going from unbridled love and understanding to joining the mob, accusing him of manslaughter, locking him up and sending him back to Norfolk – seemed sudden and jarring. As if it had only been included to create a redemptive arc in the second series that had already been dealt with fairly succinctly in the first. Miss Martin also managed to ascend from minor community MP to tyrannical dictator alarmingly easily. Doesn't Roarton have a police force? Who's enforcing the travel ban? How do you impose martial law with naught but two gun-toting drunkards, one of whom is denser than the middle of a neutron star, and Jem?

But let's talk about what the series did well – which was basically everything else. The introduction of mercurial swoon-magnet Simon was one particular highlight: his transformation from creepy cult leader through furious terrorist into Kieren's devoted love interest was handled beautifully; until the moment he saved Kieren's life you weren't entirely sure what he'd do. Emmett Scanlan's performance has never dipped below superb.

A highpoint of the series for me was the heartbreaking tale of Freddie and Hayley's doomed marriage. I was a little worried the show was biting off more brains than it could chew (come on, ONE zombie pun) in using minor characters to explore an idea impossible for its main players. But it was played incredibly deftly, the relationship rang wholly true, and the final sequence was genuinely nervewracking. Even if Hayley getting trapped in the locker with a rabid Freddie had been signposted more clearly than most major towns along the M62.

The episode was but one example of this second series using its extra episodes to expand upon its ideas and mythology without losing much of what made the first a success. It still looks, and is, superbly bleak, Roarton Valley's drab peaks looming like an oppressive cocoon around its trapped denizens; the acting is uniformly excellent; and its juxtaposition of a fantastical premise with the spitefully dull realities of life, such as poor Philip's toaster troubles, allows it to always feel real and personal.

It is also fantastically written by Dominic Mitchell, scattered with so many little neat ideas – like the undead using sheep's brains like the living use ecstasy – that many are actually wasted. It's also brave in the amount to which it's still hugely allegorical, albeit sometimes a little too baldly: this series explored the emergence of right-wing politics, their propagation of hatred and oppression's causal link to fundamentalism.. But it's still, at least, saying something in a situation where many shows either wouldn't bother or wouldn't dare.

I hope a third series is on the way, because it feels as though there's much more to be said, and swathes of questions still to be answered. High-concept shows such as In the Flesh do have an unfortunately high attrition rate, as those still mourning The Fades will know. But In The Flesh deserves a third series because it's still one of the strongest dramas – zombie or otherwise – on TV.